This course asks students to consider the ways in which social theorists, institutional reformers, and political revolutionaries in the 17th through 19th centuries seized upon insights developed in the natural sciences and mathematics to change themselves and the society in which they lived. Students study trials, art, literature and music to understand developments in Europe and its colonies in these two centuries. Covers works by Newton, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Marx, and Darwin.

This course introduces the history of the Age of Revolutions in the Atlantic World from 1776 to 1848. Running alongside and extending beyond these political revolutions is the First Industrial Revolution. The Atlantic World, dominated by European empires in 1776, was transformed through revolution into a series of independent states by 1848, experiencing profound changes through the development and consolidation of capitalism. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: think analytically about the history of the revolutionary age between 1776 and 1848; define what a “revolution” means as well as describe what made 1776-1848 an “age of revolution”; define the concept of the Atlantic World and describe its importance in World History; explain the basic intellectual and technical movements associated with the Enlightenment and their relations to the revolutionary movements that follow; identify and describe the causes of the American Revolution; identify and describe the many stages of the French Revolution: the end of absolutist monarchy, the implementation of constitutional monarchy, and the rise of the Jacobin Republic; compare and contrast the Declaration of the Rights of Man and other major statements of the Revolutionary period and Enlightenment thinking; identify and describe the impact of the first successful slave rebellion in world history—the Haitian Revolution; compare and contrast the debate between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine; analyze and interpret primary source documents that elucidate the causes and effects of the Age of Revolutions. This free course may be completed online at any time. (History 303)

This subject surveys main currents of European cultural and intellectual history in the modern period. Such a foundation course is central to the humanities in Europe. The curriculum introduces a set of ideas and arguments that have played a formative role in European cultural history, and acquaints them with some exemplars of critical thought. Among the topics to be considered: the critique of religion, the promise of independence, the advance of capitalism, the temptations of Marxism, the origins of totalitarianism, and the dialects of enlightenment. In addition to texts, we will also discuss pieces of art, incl. paintings and film.

This course covers French politics, culture, and society from Louis XIV to Napoleon Bonaparte. Attention is given to the growth of the central state, the beginnings of a modern consumer society, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, including its origins, and the rise and fall of Napoleon.

This course covers the emergence of modern France. Topics include the social, economic, and political transformation of France; the impact of France's revolutionary heritage, of industrialization, and of the dislocation wrought by two world wars; and the political response of the Left and the Right to changing French society.

This lesson is part of the French Revolution unit that examines the reigns of the absolute monarchs and the monetary crisis of the French government.

Examines the origins, course, and consequences of the revolution which arose in France at the end of the eighteenth century and its Napoleonic sequel. Particular attention given to the interplay of politics, culture, and social questions in the period, as well as the impact of the Revolution outside France. The French esteem the Revolution of 1789 to be the turning point in their national history; journalists, politicians, scholars, and others outside France have called this moment the birth of modern political culture. In this subject we will begin with a brief survey of French politics, culture and society in the century prior to the Revolution, emphasizing the reasons for the end of the Old Regime and the origins of the Revolution. Next, we will examine the turbulent decade of the 1790s, when the French experimented with a constitutional monarchy, a republic, a dictatorship by committee, and a parliamentary form of government, only to end in a military coup d'état staged by Napoléon Bonaparte and his supporters. In 1804, Napoléon crowned himself emperor thus initiating the First Empire, which was characterized by relentless military campaigning abroad and the consolidation of certain legal and administrative reforms at home. Finally, we will consider the impact of the Revolution and its Napoleonic sequel in Europe and elsewhere, and we will discuss the ongoing influence of these events in the following two centuries. This subject is open to all interested undergraduates and graduate students; there are no prerequisites.

Subject studies important examples of the literary form that, between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century, became an indispensable instrument for representing modern life, in the hands of such writers as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Austen, Scott, Dickens, the Bront%s, Eliot, Hardy, and Conrad. The class alternates between eighteenth and nineteenth century topics, and may be repeated for credit with instructor's permission.

Examines a number of famous trials in European and American history. Considers the salient issues (political, social, cultural) of several trials, the ways in which each trial was constructed and covered in public discussion at the time, the ways in which legal reasoning and storytelling interacted in each trial and in later retellings of the trial, and the ways in which trials serve as both spectacle and a forum for moral and political reasoning. Students have an opportunity to study one trial in depth and present their findings to the class.